LOST's Lindelof: ‘I’m Ready To Come Back To TV Full Time’!!

Now with four big-budget spaceship movies – two “Star Treks,” “Cowboys & Aliens” and “Prometheus” -- under his belt, “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof says he’s ready to come back to TV full-time, finalizing a new 3-year deal at Warner Bros. TV.

That’s where the other “Lost” co-creator, J.J. Abrams, has situated his TV shop since 2006.

(For those who follow my radio adventures, there’s a possibility Lindelof will be on the air with myself and Mr. KERN Saturday evening to talk about “Prometheus.”)

Lindelof, who got his start scripting series like “Wasteland,” “Nash Bridges” and “Crossing Jordan,” has been away from TV since “Lost” left the air two years ago.

From Deadline Hollywood:

“I think certainly film-wise, I’m spaced out, I think I’ve got the robot-spaceship future bug out of my system.” On the TV side, “I probably won’t be the guy who creates the next Mad Men or Breaking Bad, though I love both of these shows. What I love about television is character-based storytelling, and I want to continue to explore fantastical way of doing it where characters live in a world that is a little skewed.” Don’t expect a new Lost from him. “I won’t be the one that would come up with the next Lost,” Lindelof said, adding that he has no interest in doing more shows with “wackadoo mythology.”

Lindelof may simultaneously produce “1952,” a mysterious potential movie he wrote for Disney with Entertainment Weekly writer Jeff Jensen, as he resumes his TV career.

That project definitely has my interest, but could end up as lackluster as the rest of the stuff he's written since lost. I love all his episodes of lost, but have not enjoyed his movies. Eagerly awaiting Prometheus, I think the hype machine is causing all these B- scores im seeing is causing nerds to think its terrible. It'll be a good movie. Nothing more or less hopefully. As far as tv, if he can create some characters as meaningful and memorable as Jack, Ben, Kate and the gang, bring it on, that is what I miss most about lost being on. Shows like bsg and lost, while flawed sometimes , had perfect characters who I deeply cares for. Shows don't have that currently. Not that deeply, at least. So I hope he makes a good show. And I hope to god both Prometheus and 1952 are better than the god awful Cowboys & Aliens. That was a huge piece of shit.

If you disagree, I would encourage you to consider whether you appreciate good writing. Specifically the concepts of "plants" and "payoffs". I wish LOST had followed the most basic of writing concepts. I have no desire to watch any shows by anyone involved. They've lost the goodwill of TV audiences forever. Rightly so.

some of the fans guessed it and they decided to change the ending in the last year or two. The ending they came up with totally made everything that happened between Season 2 and Season 6 irrelevant. The entire last season was pointless. It's sad, because the first 3 seasons were so outstanding and I think the Season 3 finale was the best season finale I've seen in any show, ever.
Anyway, I really won't watch anything from this guy again. I really don't even want to see Prometheus, now. Given that they've pretty much telegraphed every plot point and I'm pretty sure the ending will suck based on Lindelof being involved...

People focus on the final episode too much. When really it was the entire last season.
The show would have been better to have ended at the end of season 5, with Juliet smashing the rock on the nuke. Sure that'd answer nothing, but it'd be more fitting than what we got. Than a horrible, annoying, frustrating final season. Where part of the way through you realise they're making it up as they go along and there's no way the final will be good.
Storylines were changing week to week. Almost every storyline from the past 5 series was completely dropped and forgotten. Most of the characters had little story going on. You could just tell they didn't know what they were doing. So much for planning out the final seasons.
It's pretty much certain the whole reveal of the flash universe was never meant to be purgatory when the season started. That it was intially they changed the future, but that was the path they were meant to take or something. However that got too hard so they ditched it.
They just kind of ditched everything. Focused on Jacob and his brother who we didn't give a crap about. The most annoying aspect was, if they were dropping most of the storylines. Like Dharma. Why not have given a bit more explanation to the Dharma mysteries in the previous seasons.
It always felt like they were passing on opportunities to answer things for future episodes. Then the final season started and they ditched all of the storylines and mysteries.
What other weird things, like smoke monster, yellow light, oh some people landed here over time and manipulated the power, donkey blah blah blah. Were handled horribly. Like none of that was really important.
The whole meeting in purgatory thing. One of the problems also is, any show could end with that. It was just done as a salvage of the completely badly handled plots of the final season.
The final season we were all promised had been thought out we ahead of time, with the previous seasons leading to it.
They can say all they want, we didn't really promise to reveal everything ect. However they did fucking promise to have planned out a final season a head of time. Instead of the mess we got.

I actually think it was Carlton Cuse;s fault...it was his idea to move away from the deep island mythology to something more religious and character based...I think JJ Abrams and Lindelof had something more epic in mind but when Cuse came onboard in Season 2 his vision took over for some reason

There was nothing wrong with the finale. In fact, it was very fitting and somewhat profound. But I say that as someone who always enjoyed the character arcs in "Lost," and not so much the sci-fi elements.
I fucking KNEW from the first season on there was no way they would answer all the questions and riddles of the series, regardless of how long it ran. Unfortunately, a lot of "Lost" fans got hoodwinked by Lindelof and Cuse, and for that they can be considered assholes -- and the finale a complete slap in the face. They really misled the fans by making them think EVERYTHING would be answered, and those who put their misguided faith in them got dicked over.
Despite this, I think most of us would agree "Lost" is one of the all-time great shows. Definitely in my top five.

The worst part of it, the very worst sin - was that they spent YEARS building up each of these characters. The most interesting of the lot (like Desmond and Miles, for example), had squat to do with the outcome of the show's events, even though it appeared they had far greater purposes than the headliners (Jack, Kate, Sawyer.)
The whole thing was a contorted mess. It was like they intentionally re-wrote every twist after hearing what the media had to say and in a desperate attempt to surprise people, they pulled it outta their ass.

That if they ended it on season 5 with the nuke detonating then MAYBE cunts like me could forgive and forget a lot of the shit and remember the show fondly but that's not what happened. That last season was insanely terrible. Why the fuck did Sayiid revert to an English accent? WHY? What possible fucking reason was there for that? HOLY SHITBALLS!!!!

you just have to kill off a main character or two, contrive a reunion scene and tie the last image to the first image of the show, and it's a fucking good finale! ...nevermind that the finale didn't provide a reasonable explanation of the season, much less the series.
have to say i loved seasons 3.5 - 5, though. it was a fun ride, but the last season was complete bullshit.

It perfectly tied up the story of redemption that was there from day one. I kind of wish for a few more answers, but most of them can be answered by just watching and studying the show. Great show, great final season and great finale!

Pretty much every single thing they did with Ben was brilliant. Maybe it was because Michael Emerson is such a great actor, but he had all the best storylines. I only wish we could have seen more of a Ben-Widmore showdown over control of the island, and a resolution to the whole Ben-loves-Juliet storyline. Plus, we never got to see what happened to Annie.

They did right by the characters, although some of the endings were tragic (Jin and Sun), I feel like it really worked.
I loved that Locke really was a martyr to the island, and he didn't get to come back from the dead and save the day somehow.
I love that Jack didn't entirely find peace in life, but Hurley and all his friends helped him find in sideways-land.
I loved Sawyer and Juliet finding each other again.
I liked everything about Ben, Hurley, Miles, Kate, and little Aaron.
On the mythology side, I LOVED Alpert's metaphor about the island being a cork. but then the show ruined it by having a whole episode where everyone's just randomly doing things because Jacob's mom told them to with no explanation. Or that the Others temple with the Asian guy explained nothing after like four episodes were wasted there.
And then I really didn't like that there was LITERALLY a cork they had to put in the ground inside the magic cave.
But LOST minus the magic cave is one of the top 3 shows EVER MADE!

Seriously, you knew well in advance exactly how long you had to complete the storylines on Lost and give the characters and show satisfying resolutions. You knew how many seasons, even how many episodes you had with a huge lead in, so you had all the time in the world to map things out and get everything sorted, and yet you still fucked it up.
I mean don't get me wrong, I still loved the journey of Lost, and as I'm more of a 'journey not the destination' kinda guy, I don't regret watching Lost for a minute, but that still doesn't overshadow the fact that the ending was trite, predictable, and utterly mediocre in both execution and idea.
Great shows deserve great endings, they don't always get it, but more often than not when that happens it is because they didn't have the opportunity, as they were cancelled outright with no warning, or had the rug pulled before they got to play all their cards, leading to a forced compromise in how they then go out. But Lost had the golden ticket, they had a free run to do what they wanted, and all the lead time in the world to allow them to end the show exactly how they wanted to, and they still botched it, and to quite a degree at that. And that is what makes Lost's ending all the more disappointing, not only was it mediocre at best, but there is no excuse for it to have been so.
Alas, what could (and should) have been...

they blow up the bomb, it causes a reset of the timeline and everyone lives happily ever after. No magic lighthouse, no magic cave or weird magical spells, no wooden boat somehow smashing a stone statue and ending up in the middle of the jungle (?!), no pointless Temple others who again had NO CLUE ABOUT WHAT WAS GOING ON and seriously no fucking stupid flashsideways misdirect.
What I hated most about season 6 was the sideways universe.
Why does it start with them on the plane? To mislead the audience.
Why is the Island sunk? To mislead the audience.
Why is Eloise there and why it is implied she knows more about what is going on? To mislead the audience.
The whole thing is a misdirect. Its like they decided before the final season that fans were going to be pissed off that none of the questions would be answered so they created one final mystery - the sideways - and at least answered that. Unfortunately they did it in the EXACT same way that Lindelof hated the Matrix for answering questions, they had a wise old man reveal the answer to the main character.
Its a truly terrible ending to what was a seminal TV series. And although the on-Island stuff wasn't as bad it still climaxed with the show's most annoying character - Kate - shooting the main bad guy in the back and pushing him off a cliff. Not exactly a big finish.
I would never go as far as to say 'I wasted x amount of hours' watching the show because while it was on it was very enjoyable. But finding out the emperor wears no clothes rendered the series unwatchable.
They didn't have to explain everything, of course not, but some things needed explaining.
For example, why did some of the chracters get 'jumped' back to Dharma times for the whole of season 5? That was a major mystery because it affected the plot in a significant way.
The answer appears to be "just cuz". Much like the answers to most of the major mythology questions.

I've met the guy a few times @ book signings & he was always very gracious & interesting. You stupid fuck tards need to stop putting him down. You're just a bunch of cockblocking douche chilli-ass bags who jerk off to tear sheets of Hayden Panettiere while you mom's at work

It makes no sense to dismiss all the good work Lindeloff or RD Moore did up til that point
It blows my mind that people will just ignore all the great work Moore did on TNG, DS9 and BSG because they didn't like the ending.
It makes me think that if Kubrick had survived to make one more film, and that film had been a huge turd, all you supposed film lovers would be throwing your dvds for 2001, dr strangelove, the shining, etc in the trash

Season six was the only season that was truly, absolutely awful. Everyone knew deep down the ending would suck horribly since they figured out the whole purgatory thing. Truth is that seasons 1-3 were some of the best seasons of any show EVER in the history of television. Anybody who says otherwise is a troll, is dumb as a pile of rocks, or just someone who thinks it's cool to hate the WHOLE show because of one season.
It was more or less obvious from the start the people behind the show were stalling, stringing us all along. Thing is they were damn good at it, better than pretty much anyone at the time and they managed to deliver some brilliant TV while they were at it.

The 'it was purgatory all along' theory people had since the beginning was that that the 815ers died in the plane crash and everything on the island was purgatory
But it wasn't
The only thing that was purgatory was the 'flash-sideways' in season 6, which is basically about one Third of one season of the show, and doesn't have any impact on the resolution of the Island mystery storyline, it was just about the resolution of the characters.
That's why I don't really get the complaints about that stuff, because the show had the flashbacks since the beginning and the flash forwards since the end of season 3, which were also just about fleshing out the characters and showing them in a different context, and didn't directly impact the island mystery stuff. So why are the flash-sideways/purgatory segments any less valid for that purpose?
I personally would have prefered the final scene took place on the beach instead of the church, since it's visually more in step with overall tone of the show, but I don't mind the sentiment of the scene at all, and I'm an atheist! Or an agnostic at the very least.
The resolution of the island mystery stuff is Jack killing fake-Locke, Hurley becoming the new jacob and Jack's final sacrifice. If people take issue with that, then that's a different kettle of fish, but nobody ever seems to mention that, it's always just the 'it's the worst show ever because they were dead all along' stuff, which i don't understand at all, especially because the show specifically clarified that they were NOT dead all along. There's nothing ambigous about it.

and not very well executed.
and that in the final season the Others turned out to have no baring on the endgame of the show, since they were my favorite element outside of the main characters, and the most interesting mystery.
They could have had that the 'source' was inside the Temple, and that the whole point of the Others was to protect the source from the smoke monster. Put the temple attack much later in the season, and in general make the temple stuff more interesting, have Ben and Richard there instead of Dogen and Lennon.
Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the show as a whole, I don't like season 6 as much as seasons 1-4, but the only season that I actually think is 'bad' (and even that is only compared with the other seasons) is season 5. Because it creates some major continuity problems, and introduces a lot of NEW mysteries that never got resolved, when the show should have already started focusing on wrapping things up.
Still though regardless, even with any flaws I still think its one of the best shows of all time, and certainly by far one of (if not the most) ambitious in terms of the type story it told, and how it told it. Complex non-linear storytelling from dozens of different perspectives, which demanded careful attention from it's viewers while not losing sight of character development.

do you hate all of Twin Peaks because everything after the Laura Palmer mystery wrapped up is awful?
Do you hate ALL of the X-files because some of the later seasons were not as stellar as the early ones?
Do you not find any of Seinfeld funny now because the finale is such a stinker?
I just have trouble understanding how anyone watching the final season of Lost while it was airing really thought or expected that the flash-sideways storyline was somehow going to lead to an explanation or payoff to the main island story, when they were so clearly unrelated.

"It makes me think that if Kubrick had survived to make one more film, and that film had been a huge turd, all you supposed film lovers would be throwing your dvds for 2001, dr strangelove, the shining, etc in the trash "
so maybe we should hate jaws because crystal skull was shit?
those are separate films... they have no bearing on one another. crystal skull makes me think a lot less of the beard, but doesnt affect his previous stuff.
the ending to a tv show however can cast a serious shadow on the preceding episodes, which is why i always ask losties if they still rewatch eps. personally i havent rewatched a lost ep since, just cant do it, the ending makes me think 'this is all random bullshit' no matter which ep i watch.
prometheus is an interesting example as it's a prequel and sounds like it's a bit rubbish which may end up affecting how i view alien, like it's harder to watch the original trilogy after seeing stupid shit like vader's NOOOOO and hayden christenson crying like a baby.

I rewatched all of season 6 when the blu-ray set came out, I was worried that knowing what the flash-sideways segments actually were would take away from them, but I find that I actually enjoyed them quite a bit more.
It puts them in the context of these are the realities the characters created for themselves, and it really shows what all of their baggage was. Sayid for example creates a reality where he can't have Nadia, because he doesn't think he deserves her. Jack creates a son who is essentially also himself at a young age to try and create a better version of his relationship with his own father, etc.
I also rewatched the entire series from beginning to end about a year ago, and as mentioned in some of my other posts, the only parts that really bothered me are in season 5.
Although I will admit in season 6, the 2nd episode 'what kate does' is pretty weak, and the temple stuff in general could be a lot more interesting than it is. But again as a whole, the series held up well. For me anyways.

I guess I just don't see it as random shit, because I never thought of all the mysteries having one answer that applies to all of them
There were probably over 100 'mysteries' on Lost, and I would say (again, in my opinion) the majority of them were paid off well.
But like I said, being objective, I think there should have been more focus on the Others in the final season. I wanted to know 1) how they convince normal people to become Others, since it appears they did so of their own free will, and believed enough in the cause (whatever it was) to kill other people.
2) I wanted to know if they really were 'good' as Ben always suggested.
I don't think these 2 things were really paid off properly.
A lot of other things, most actually i think, were paid off pretty well. And for everything that people say 'wasn't planned out ahead of time for' there is something in the show which by design or by chance that resonates really well on 2nd viewing
Like just before the commercial break in Locke's first flashback, whe hear the ticka-ticka monster sound, connecting Locke with smokey. or in one of jack's first flashbacks his father says 'your problem is you don't know how to let go'
I would never claim the show is perfect. No show is. Mad men and the Wire come pretty close. But there are few shows I have enjoyed watching more than I did watching Lost, and I don't feel that has changed over time.

Even though I pretty much hated the final season I agree with a lot you what you say. The difference is I actually really liked season 5. For me, when watching that season I got the sense that they were really amping up to explain a whole load of the mysteries on the show. The time travel seemed like it was important (then at least) and the introduction of Jacob and MIB was fascinating. That scene in particular was excellent and really heightened the anticipation for season 6.
But as you say, ultimately season 5 had very little consequence to the major arc. We never found out just why the time travel happened, what the deal was with the cabin or really anything more about the stories that were set up that year. But I found the episodes themselves to be some of the show at its best.
Season 6 was largely just a waste. The temple Others were yet another group set up on the island to be the myterious people in authority (like the original others, or Dharma, or the freighter folk previously) only to be killed off before we discovered anything about them. Characters like Claire, Widmore, Desmond, Miles and Ben came back only for about 1-2 lines an episode.
But mostly people just walked about. In the final stretch of the series you'd expect some major confrontation, but despite the referenced 'war is coming' nothing really happened until the final episode.
And then there was a magic well and a magic plug. The End.
Parts of it were good. I liked Richard's episode, and the ending of Jack dying next to Vincent was well done. But overall it still shit the bed and more than any other show I think its ending REALLY affected how you judge the series as a whole. I've never watched an episode again since it ended.

I think that's a valid take, and I meant to say before that I actually like your idea about just ending the show with Juliet hitting the bomb at the end of season 5 and leaving people to wonder what would have happened. In it's own way I would have respected that ending quite a bit.
The problem with the time travel stuff is that after teasing it for a few seasons, and having it be by far the most outlandish element on the show it needed to be 1) executed well, which for the most part I don't think it was, and 2) needed to be important, which it wasn't
the thing is, time travel very easily COULD have been the rosetta stone of the whole series, time travel could have explained:
Jacob in the Cabin, the cave skeletons, the whispers, and a slew of others things.
That would have made the time travel worthwhile and perhaps been more of what a lot of people wanted, in that it would be a unifying answer to most of the major mysteries. I started to get worried when Locke told Richard about the time travel and he didn't believe him.
And yes I agree, not explaining how and why the time travel even occurred, or why some losties were affected by it and not others was not good.
again, I'm not saying season5 is devoid of quality or good moments, I just think overall it feels the most off track for the series.
Jack's arc in particular bugs me, because after the end of season4, he should basically be in season6 mode where he is the new Locke and believes in the island. But instead we get a Jack who now wants to make it that he NEVER went to the island in the first place.
There is a lot of continuity stuff (especially with Sun, Ben, Rousseau, Locke/Jeremy Bentham and Widmore) in season 5 that does not jive with seasons 3 & 4. and a lot of stuff with people's motivations that feel very out of step with their previous behaviors, and just basic logic. And this is one area where I feel season6 trumps 5, because I feel like the characters are more or less back on track.
If Season 5 had been the Oceanic 6 returning to the island, and meanwhile sawyer and the gang were contending with the Others, or maybe Keamy and his men had not been killed in season4 so the mercs were an ongoing threat, and all the reunion stuff took place in present day. Then Jack could be the one with 'resurrected' John Locke, following him to go kill Jacob, and then reveal that Locke really was dead, and resurrected Locke was smokey would have had even more impact.
There would have been less to wrap up in 6 then, and it could just focus on Jack and the losties confronting Smokey, people taking sides, Widmore's return. and a final battle at the temple. Or something like that.
Again there are a lot of ways it could have gone, that just seems a bit more streamlined to me. But I respect your take on it also.

I watched the pilot the other day, it's pretty good. It's got hot hot hot Rachel Nichols, plus Cancer man from X-files, plus a lot of actors from stargate, and the main director from 24.
Like a lot of science fiction shows, its shot in Vancouver, but unlike all the other science fiction shows, it actually TAKES PLACE IN Vancouver.

This is a Talkback. Any comment you make, IS your opinion. To state that, after expressing oneself, is to totally undermine what was said. Is it used as some sort of wimpy "escape hatch," were someone to disagree? It's a weak approach to discussion, and likely a bad habit promoted by the LCD Internet crowd.

...or JUST not the Unanswered mysteries. Its how the show constantly would swing away from plot points it established. Its how some characters don't even make sense if thought about to hard. Two examples, and these are just two in a myriad of instances (both involving the most interesting and most disappointing character's arc: Desmond). ONE. Desmond sees Claire and Aaron get on a helicopter but ONLY if Charlie dies. Charlie dutifully dies in a huge season ending plot turn. Now, Aaron gets the helicopter ride (not necessarily owing to Charlie dying) and the love of his life has a horrible real-world "infected" fate. This was not just a plot point promised, it was an emotional investment in character that was thwarted. TWO. Eloise Hawking. Huh? She shows up omnipresent in the past to guide Desmond to the island. Why? It doesn't save her son. If this "past" is actually the "Sideways-knitted-together-by-the-dead-awaiting-everyone-to-die-reality" that Desmond later finds he can enter, and if this is the Sideways Eloise, what does she care what happens in the living world? Damon at the end of Season 3 described her as a "temporal policeman". WTF? She's not that at all. And even if she was, if she had secretly been watching and using Daniel's time traveling theories, why would she be pushing everyone to an island and a denouement that would mean her younger self killing her only son? And if she's dead Eloise then she's with her son anyway. Don't let them fool you with it was not about the mysteries, it was "all about character". Fuck them. Fuck them in the ass.

This, I don't think, has ever been brought up: Who is visiting Hurley at the asylum? If Charlie is a ghost, he's traveling from the Sideways world to the real world where he admits to being a ghost without knowledge that he now exists in a Sideways world where he thinks he's alive??? What???

Ultimately becomes a talkback more or less about LOST. Like it or not, that just shows the importance of the show and the incredible impact it had. Love it, hate it, whatever. It's not going anywhere. Prepare to have lost, and this conversation, be part of the lexicon for a long, long, long time. And isn't that often the sign of a great work? The conversation never stops...

nope. constantly arguing about it does not make it good. sorry. this whole idea of 'art' in tv/filmmaking provoking 'debates' is silly. i'd rather it was just better written and everyone enjoyed it more than some people like it and some feel like they were fucked over. but whatever... who cares anymore, really. i'm more annoyed lindeloff is doing the same thing again and hasn't learned from his mistakes.

So the science people were disappointed. But it was a bland generic vaguely spiritual unitarian universalist new agey kind of faith, so you then lose a lot of the faith crowd who had any kind of specificity in their belief. They stopped suggesting things and finally spelled it all out in a way that didn't resonate with a big chunk of the audience once they finally played the purgatory card.
They should have let the audience decide for themselves and we should have never gone into the church. Everything leading up to that could have been explained (loosely) with existing theories, and they could have wrapped things up in a way that let you decide for yourself if the flash sideways events were a faith based purgatory/afterlife or if they were something based on quantum physics, string theory, etc. The finale became frustrating and disappointing the moment we entered that church and saw the empty coffin. The writers finally played the cards they had been hiding, and the science/reason half of the show vanished as we were left with that unsatisfyingly vague spiritual pandenominational interfaith cocktail party of hugs, dreamy knowing smiles and glowing light.
The failure of the show was that in the final moments, they dropped the tension between faith and science/reason and went with an overtly/explicitly spiritual explanation instead of something more ambiguous that could have been embraced by viewers on both sides and invited continued discussion and interpretation over the years. Now there's nothing to discuss but how you felt about purgatory. It was the one time they should have left things up to the viewer to decide for themselves, and they miscalculated by trying to stick the landing instead of leaving the landing up to the viewer, in the tradition of the show. That's why I don't think the final minutes of the finale were an appropriate conclusion to the six years that built up to it.

Yeah I agree but not because the final season was any good, just that the other seasons were. No show has ever captured my imagination like LOST. Some of the fan theories were fantastic to read. Unfortunately that just made what the writers came up with all the more disappointing.
Every mystery they did answer was an anticlimax, I mean come on did anyone think when they first saw the Black Rock "oh I bet it just crashed there on a tidal wave" or that the smoke monster was a man who fell in a magic cave 2000 years ago?
One of my mates who stopped watching around season 2 asked me once what happened at the end, I got halfway through explaining the flash sideways and he just said "you know what, I don't care". Summed it up really

. . . Great, in spite off shitty, pulled from ass ending. No way I ever say it sucked because of the lame ending. I'll just focus on kick-ass season finales, great characters, and all the enjoyment I got out of the ride . . .

i dont think people realize this.
the ending had absolutely nothing to do with the SHOW, the island itself. nothing they did was explained. you could have ended Threes company the same way. "ok here is this purgatory world and one day you will all meet up there and go to heaven together"
meanwhile the hatch, the black smoke, jacob, none of that stuff matters anymore. u watched the show for no reason.
lol, so terrible.
meanwhile u got a show like The Shield that pays off the very first episode in the very last episode. THAT is writing.

And I agree with Rebel Scum. Well said.
No TV show is perfect, but for some reason, LOST became a part of my life. The friends I have today are some of my best thru going out and watching it live every week.
So, it's always gonna be special to me regardless if we got all the answers or they had a final season that didn't live up to every fanboy's expectations.
Rather than bitching, do what LOST made you do: Use your imagination and figure out or write it here, an ending you would have wanted.
(and dont type FACT! either)

Then...
1) Why did all the characters become two-dimensional bores making decisions that made little sense in the last episode?
2) Why did the series blatantly play up the mystery element for its entire 6 season run all the way up to the end?
3) Comeon! They knew the characters were only one element in what made the show interesting. And you know, if the series finale had been a great episode full of character depth and intense emotions a la any of the great TRUE character dramas from Mad Men to Breaking Bad, then a lack of actually have a real mythology and just throwing shit at the wall might have not been so offensive. But no such depth character-wise was in the last season at all, except for the one episode with (man I've already forgotten most of the character's names) the mayor from Dark Knight in the past on the ship. And guess what, THAT was the episode everyone liked the most, like The Constant, because it had great character moments, not because it answered bullshit mysteries.

Not necessarily. Especially since, to non-geeks like us, Lost is gone and past. Nobody I know talks about it anymore. The Wire, The Shield, Deadwood, Rome... all still very much in the conversation. Lost, who really watches it or is into it now like some of the above shows I mentioned?
I mean people still bitch about The Sopranos ending whenever that show is mentioned, and that was a much stronger show than Lost. Does that mean The Sopranos is now defined solely by its ending, even though it was a show much more about the journey than the destination?
Or everytime Mel Gibson is mentioned, all people can do is talk about his bigotry and hypocrisy and not his films.
Or anytime M. Night is even mentioned at all, all anyone can do is bitch about his career and the "twists" he puts in his films.
I guarantee you if Lost was mentioned in something that WASN'T about future work from one of the primary minds behind the last season (say, Lost is mentioned in an Avengers or Dark Knight Rises post), NOBODY would fucking mention the damn thing because it was such a basic betrayal of any actual storytelling standards. It's like a trainwreck and anytime the conductor's name is mentioned and that's all you have to go off of, boy does it remind you of the colliding metal exploding on the tracks.

It's fun. There are some great drops and so many details to wonder over. Then at the very end, you go through a boring burning building and you think "Weird. I don't know where they are going with this but I'm sure it's gonna be a great ending." Slowly you start to go UP UP UP with an exciting CLICKATY CLACK, CLICKATY CLACK, until you reach the TOP and then......! ....you get a nice view of the people waiting in line and the ride is over. Wha?

While I'm Canadian myself I do agree most Canadian shows look like ass, however continuum looks as good as any american show. And it's produced by Showcase which is a Canadian cable channel, so it's not a runaway production. The majority of the cast are canadian also.

Sorry this was meant to be in the last post:
I agree that putting 'in my opinion' is redundant, unfortunately too many people assume if you don't put it, what you are saying you believe to be universally true, so I find it easier to just include it now and then to not come across as arrogant.

If the nuke had gone off the island would not be at the bottom of the ocean with all it's houses and structures still intact. Islands aren't boats, they don't sink, and nukes don't sink things anyways
If the bomb had destroyed the island then there would still likely be some island above the waterline, it would just be a desolate barren scorched rock
the island at the bottom of the ocean is the first indication (of many) that the sideways universe is not what people assume
there are other clues like the fact that Dr. Pierre Chang is the same age he was in 1977, Locke's better relationship with his dad, Kate being innocent of the murder, and tons of other things that would not be effected at all by a nuke going off on a remote island

I do agree the Eloise stuff was poorly handled, and in additon the whole Desmond seeing the future thing and course correction does not jive with the 'whatever happened, happened' logic the show adopted later.
You'll get no argument from me that that was an area they clearly switched gears on, and to ill effect.
At the end of the day, things like that that I am dissappointed by don't detract from my overall enjoyment enough that it effects my ability to enjoy the show as a whole.
Most shows, even the great ones have lousy episodes or seasons. Obviously certain things could be better, but I still feel the vast majority of things are done well.

Look at face: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1001504256/nm0511541
Thats the face of a retarded spoiled brat
this guy is a little sissy (or a "bubble" as we say here in Brazil) how can sissy like that be writer? what kind of "hard stuff" could ever get through that head?!
just forget it...

While I would argue that Lost always favored magic and supernatural over science
I would say in terms of the on island pay off, the 'source' was arguably something that was a scientific phenomenon (an electromagnetic anomoly) that had been interpreted as some as magic
Overall it was just an unexplained powerful energy
But the show had a monster and ghosts in it right from the start of season 1, so I never really put any money down on anything being science based on the show
even most 'science' in proper science fiction shows like star trek and doctor who is mostly just magic with technobabble to make it seem plausible

as opposed to Heros, The event, flashforward and the myriad of other shows that have tried unsuccessfully to emulate it is that LOST created a huge cast of memorable iconic characters that were all interesting and enjoyable to spend an hour with each week.
Movies are like a one night stand, but tv shows are like a marriage, and they live and die by how we connect with the characters. It doesn't matter how good the writing, directing or production values are if we don't. And if we connect with the characters strongly enough we can overlook just about any other flaw the show has.
To say that how the show did or did not answer each of it's mystery arcs is not important because the characters were resolved is not true, because the show did use the mysteries as a big selling feature.
However, I feel fair in saying that if you sat down to watch the finale, and honestly believed there was going to be some scene towards the end where you saw something or were told something that suddenly made the mysterious island, the smoke monster, the time travel, jacob, widmore, eloise, walt, The Others, the egyptians, the numbers and the dharma initiative all suddenly make blinding sense and tie together in a logical scientific way, then I'm sorry but that was very very foolish of you.

The on island mystery adventure survival action show.
and the show we flashed to each week about a characters past, future or alternate life.
In the best episodes these 2 seperate shows were thematically connected in terms of the characters journey, sometimes the connection was not as strong as in others.
So in judging the finale, the way the sideways resolved and the way the on island stuff resolved are two different things, and that's why I'm confused why people feel the church stuff was an insult to the on island story.
If the show had never had the flashbacks, flashforwards or flashsideways until the finale, I would completely agree. But that was a part of the show all along
if anything, it would have been more of a 'fuck you' to the structure of the show to not have any sort of flash to another character based story off the island in the finale.
For those that say it was meant to be a Fringe-esque alt universe until the last minute and they changed their minds, you obviously haven't rewatched it, because it is clear from the first scene of season6 that this was the plan all season.
At the point where the plane seems like it will crash like in the finale, and then doesn't, thus being the first major difference from the version of events on the plane we know, the first thing Rose says to Jack after the turbulence is:
'You can let go now'

It's so disturbing that society has evolved into a "black/white," "we versus them" atmosphere. I'm 50, and grew up in a conservative household. My parents taught me to feel free to express my opinions, BUT to ALWAYS respect opposing views. Truth be told, my Dad is a minister (still at 81), and I have never heard a word of hatred or self-righteousness come out of his mouth. In college, 90% of my best friends were "liberal." We had debates, but they were always civil and respectful. These days, I'm a liberal, and most of my friends seem to be conservative. Very odd.
My only point, was that people should always stand up for what they believe. I have never considered my opinion to be a universal truth, but merely my own opinion. It just seems that some people want it both ways, if that makes sense.
I do not confuse "opinion" with "fact" - as so many people love to screech in here.

I think you and I are basically on the same page about that. I never use to say 'in my opinion' because as you said, that should be a given.
I believe in what I say, and say what I believe, I just find unfortunately a lot of people do default to 'I don't agree with you, so you are wrong!!! I hate you!!!' at the drop of a hat, and when talking about something like a TV show that should be fun, it just saves me some grief.
But it's a relief to see there are others who understand that there's nothing wrong with simply expressing your views and not necessisarily agreeing.

here in the UK before the start of the sixth season and he said the plan was to have 2 narratives for the first part of the season and that then they would link up and be one story for the rest of the year. I'd love to know if that really was the plan at one point and why it got changed, because I might feel different towards the sideways if they hadn't taken up so much of the final season.
The question of whether or not what we were seeing was real hung over all those scenes, diminishing the effectiveness of Jin/Sun's deaths for example by showing them alive again seconds later. Maybe on rewatch it comes across better, but I have no desire to watch it again.
People say its all about the characters, well loads of characters got screwed over by the writers ultimately.
Juliet: dumped by Jack chooses to go along with a plan to nuke the entire Island even though she was dead against it moments before.
Widmore: reduced to a lane villain, shot to death in a closet.
Locke: true believer in the Island, played for a fool his entire life and then murdered seconds after choosing not to take his own life.
Michael: blown up after doing the Island's budding in a storyline that ultimately went no where. Never saw his son again, stuck on the Island forever and no place in the church.
Ilana: blown up after serving the Island's/writer's purpose. No payoff.
Sawyer: after killing the real Sawyer on a magic island, never once questions how that was possible or really even mentions it again.
Sayid: spends the final year as a zombie and then dies.
Yes, Jack and Kate and Hurley got good endings but most of the rest of them got royally shafted.

...it said the ultimate answer is other people loving you. That was supposed to be the happy payoff to the tragic and suffering of the on island stuff that was never justified (we still don't know what would happen if the island was destroyed).
In other words
-The flash sideways are an afterlife that is supposed to make us feel good about all the characters' stories and arcs not ending/ending poorly in the actual story...you know, exactly what religion tells people to make them accept suffering in their every day lives.
-The flash sideways disrespect the characters in the same the concept of an after life disrespects people as well. Aaron is a baby even though Claire gets off the island and presumably raises him? That is just ONE example.
And YES, the character's choosing which timeline is better, the one without Jacob's influence (flash sideways) and the one with Jacob's influence (original) with Desmond being the only one who can bridge the gap between the two would have been SO much more compelling.

The show ran with the 'live together or die alone' theme from early in season 1, the overall theme and arc the characters arrived at was the losties were all figuratively 'lost' in their lives, and found themselves again by becoming a community on the island, working together.
The reason the Others continually underestimated the 815ers, was not because they saw them as 'flawed' or 'bad' which they were, but because they did not anticipate that the losties would become a community, and work together.
When each of them died, some during the run of the show, some after jack's death and the island story ended, they each had unresolved baggage, for Jack it was his father issues, for Sayid it was his own self contempt belief he was evil, for Hurley it was the belief he was undeserving of love, etc.
So in death, before they could truly move on, they had to let go of that baggage, but just as in life they couldn't manage on their own, the only way they could succeed was to work together.
The trick is to think of all that sideways stuff as a flashforward, which it is. it's after the story, it's an epilogue which was shown to us in a non-linear fashion, which is something the show has always played with.
Desmond's version of events is the most interesting once you figure out what really happened to him:
-Desmond returns to the island and gets put in the electromagnetic test cabin thingy
-he dies for a few seconds while being hit with the magnetowaves
-he begins his sideways/purgatory expirence, right up to the point where he shakes hands with Penny
-He is revived back in the world of the living and on the island
-the rest of season 6 happens
-he leaves the island after Jacks death with the help of Hurley
-Desmond lives the rest of his life, and then at some point dies
-he then resumes his sideways/purgatory expirence from the exact point he left off, which is at the stadium shaking hands with Penny
-Because he had been there before, he realizes instantly that he is dead, and what the sideways really is, so he goes about getting the other Losties to wake them up

I told you about this nonesense ages ago. It was all a buldup to nothing, but to be fair, they achieved something remarkable in making many hooked into this hogwash show until the very last episode. In a way what more can a tv show ask for? You guys think Game of Thrones will end with a bang? No sensible person ought to believe that. Anyway, you shoulda watched stargate, it was a blast and didn't present questions that it couldn't answer.

Anyway, yes, the final season of Lost was terrible.
Don't agree? Go back and watch every episode of the show before watching Season 6 again and tell me at all how any of what we saw made any sense, especially considering the ending (which I will also address). That is what I did. My girlfriend was new to the show, so she watched (and loved, of course) every episode of the show and I caught about 95% of them. Every episode I thought wasn't that great the first time around was almost instantaneously better when seen without the wait of weeks or more and I was salivating at the potential for the final season!
But then they threw it all away.
Everything up until that point had alluded to a great destiny, yes, but it also alluded to a world of science fiction that could have continued to have been explored.
Season 6 of Lost through the Sci-Fi out the window, not because they couldn't focus on both, but because they were lazy.

I'm not even talking about "answers" because we, as fans, easily came up with explanations for the many "mysteries" of the island that really did make sense based on what we had seen over the course of 5 seasons.
What I'm talking about are the BIGGER ideas that they didn't address. Many ideas that were CHARACTER based and not just sci fi plot based.
thegoldbergv addresses many if not all of them, so I'll throw my two cents in on things I wish we could have seen.
- The time travel explained, in ANY way
- Establishing just how much of a threat Smokey was to the outside world
- Making Widmore and Walt matter more than the one being a fan-service afterthought
- Having the cork be a gateway, or connecting thread to other alternate universes (with yes, Desmond being the key somehow)
- Having Daniel Farraday be more of a presence in the final season, if not for his actual self helping in some way, but at least the idea that he didn't die in vain and that his scientific theories had actually meant something to the show.
- Sun and Jin addressing the fact that they had a daughter back off the island. Their death scene was beautifully shot, but to me a little hollow.
And I could go on and on...
So I could address how I wanted to see those characters interact and the explanations I wanted to see fit the bigger issues, but I don't want to get into the "what if's" because it, of course, wasn't my show to write.
At the end of the day, Season 6 failed because as much as they claimed to care about characters, they totally ignored all of their beats that lead up to this point, sullying everything that was great about the show.
Because they didn't go back and make sure they remembered what each character had been up to until that point.
Because they were lazy.

I'll admit it was tear-worthy, but a third of that was the quality of the writing of the end, a third was probably the pain of them screwing up the whole last season, and a third Michael Giacchino's score which was incredible throughout all 6 seasons.

Curious what you all would have thought of this.
My thinking all along was that the smoke monster was a cloud of nanobots (there are quite a few things in Lost that are homages to Michael Crichton books). I thought it ever since we saw images of people in the cloud when it got right up next to (was it Mr. Eko?). Millions of computers that were uploading information from his brain. I thought it would have explained how people were healing faster on the island, for one thing, even how women were losing babies in the third trimester, and how the smoke monster couldn't get past that electromagnetic fence.
Anyway, my idea was that the island was sent back in time to correct a mistake where humans were giving up their bodies to live as a cloud of particles connected to all the others. Kind of a next step from where we are now with everyone connected all the time on facebook, texting, etc. An ending to humankind, because the nanobots cured death, basically - resources dwindling, and humans having no choice but to live on as energy (something like that). One of the people who evolved himself into a smoke cloud was trapped on the island when it went back. Now what I thought would have tied this all together was if the sideways world in season 6 was actually the original timeline, where we learn that it was Jack who started the whole problem to begin with by using experimental nanotech to fix John Locke's paralysis. Once that surgery was proven successful, nanotechnology eventually grows out of control. And so they were chosen, along with some other key people, to get stuck on this island and work out their issues (Jack always having to fix things, Locke not accepting his handicap, etc.) so that the world would evolve in a new direction, where humanity was respected and death was no longer feared.
My disappointment in how it really played out was less about the sideways world (which was just a way to end the survivors' story on an emotional high - I was Ok with that) than the explanation of why all the strange things were happening on the island (MAGIC). That was anticlimactic and cheap to me, considering how thought-out so many episodes were in their references to so many books.

I agree about the interviewer dropping the ball once it came out he thought everything was made up all along, which was just bad. But regardless of that mix up, Damon's composure and openness throughout that interview is incredible. People love to bash everything about Lost now and proclaim they clearly had no fucking idea what they were doing - you can't watch that interview and say that, the man clearly is very knowledgable of his show and you could sit him down with a bunch of the ridiculous talkbackers on this site and he'd answer their questions. He's not shy nor did he back away from anything asked about it, and that's what impressed me most. When I worked for a TV station and we'd interview people like Michael Imperioli and bring up The Sopranos (which just wrapped up a year ago at the time), the guy would be a complete dick about it by either saying "I'm not gonna answer that" or "that part of my life is over, it was just a character, move on." That was the common sort of answer by most people, especially when they think they might have to defend something about their previous work. Damon Lindelof has been away from Lost for 2 years, and even though plenty of people hated the way the show ended, he's clearly capable of still explaining it to you like it were yesterday. It's pretty damn impressive stuff no matter the interviewers stumble or not.

I'm so sick of people trying to justify that crapfest of an ending by saying it was good because the show was always about the characters, so let me just clear that up. Even if it was always about the characters the ending still sucked.
But the thing is, the show wasn't just about the characters, it was about the story that was being told, and the ending had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story.
It was just plain bad storytelling, and the only reason they got away with it was because of the format in which the story was being told, i.e. episodic televison spread out over six seasons with plenty of breaks to give the viewer's minds ample opportunity to disconnect what they were currently viewing from what they viewed before. Just try pulling a shit ending like that in a different format like a book or movie where the story can be read/viewed from start to finish in one sitting and see how it works. Trust me, it ain't gonna fly.
I also call bullshit on the claim that the fact that the show is still being discussed somehow indicates that it was a great work. Maybe some are still discussing it because they think that, but many, myself included, are still discussing it because they think it was a colossal failure.

is that the interviewer wasn't even close to being as knowledgeable as anyone who is even remotely informed of the show (supporter of S6 or not) on here.
I'm just pissed that it was a HUGE missed opportunity, and that the real questions I would like to see Damon address weren't answered at all.
I mean, I was lucky enough to meet and talk to both Damon and Carlton at the big last Lost poster reveal at Gallery 1988 in LA and they were both totally cool guys and unfortunately it was before Season 6, so I'm not hating on them as people, I just wish we got something at the end that we didn't.
I really like what one talkbacker said above about how they gave an explanation instead of leaving it up for us to decide, faith or science, which was the tradition of the show all along, and that that was probably the biggest fail of all. I don't agree with that 100%, but it could have saved a lot of grief.

I would have been fine with that.
I do really like the whole misdirect though with Locke seeming to come back to life and then it actually being smokey. That felt like it was pretty thought out from the beginning, or at the very least worked really well.
But I do agree the payoff should have been them all realizing they belong on the island.

I'm of the opinion that they went with faith because even in this day and age, despite the prevalence of geek culture, there is a prejudice against science fiction. You can even see it here on this site, of all places.

Most people wouldn't have minded if the story was not wrapped up in a nice little bow or had every single story point spelled out. Most people just wanted a good ending of any kind.
Normal Person: "I didn't like the ending of Lost."
Lost Apologist: "LOL. You're what's wrong with television these days. You always want shows to connect the dots for you while they hold your hand."
Normal Person: "Um..."
Lost Apologist: "You just don't get it. ROFL."
Normal Person: >_<

the science vs faith was always about Jack and Locke's different ways of viewing things
Basically Mulder and Scully all over again.
But the stuff going on the island itself, the ghosts, the whispers, the malevolent smoke monster, the fact that their pasts were all connected, destiny, cursed numbers
Exactly where does science come into any of that?

I was at the barber the other day, typical old Italian type classic type barber, and he went on a huge rant about how there were no answers at the end of lost
the only 2 complaints I generally hear are 'no answers'
and
'they were dead all along'
oddly enough neither of which are true

that they want those of us who do still like LOST to not like it either.
I'm more than happy to point out the flaws where they exist. But to just call me an 'apologist' because I still enjoy it is pretty petty,
I don't like Breaking Bad, but I accept that a lot of people do, and I see no reason to take that away from them.

and replaced them with flash-forwards, flash-sideways, time travel.. etc. is because they visited too many websites like this one, where they read the opinion of every loser with a keyboard. People were bitching that the flash-backs were becoming boring, so they tried to make the fans happy. Season 4 was great, but the 5 and 6... not so much. I watched until the end, but wish they kept the flashback format.

compared to seasons 4-6 where they were shorter, made it feel a bit rushed. I liked the slower pace of seasons 1-3, it gave a bit more breathing room for things. I think part of why the later seasons feel a bit off is because they had such a different pace then the first 3.

I enjoyed the show at first but once season three rolled around and they introduced 73 new characters the thing got too bloated for its own good. The show is still better than the majority of what network tv has going for it, but that isn't exactly saying much...

...said the ending sucked and then gave an alternative that wasn't simply idiotic (like the interviewer on The Verge did).
I've also met almost no one who said they hated the ending and actually understood it--and I'm not saying that as a throw away insult. I'm talking about understanding it in the context of the entire series. Once you engage these people in a moment or two of discussion, they reveal they missed a few dozen pieces to the puzzle. Even in this thread, you have people who said that Desmond didn't have anything to do with anything. Really? Desmond was what caused our Losties to crash on the island, which caused every major event leading directly to the end of season 5, and then directly to the "incident" which required the Swan station to be manned in the first place (ultimately by DESMOND HIMSELF). Without Desmond, our Losties never would have made it to the island, and without making it to the island, then humanity would not have been saved by Jack (along with every single person along the way who was absolutely crucial to every event that led to that outcome).
Not once have I met someone who admitted that every major question (and most minor questions besides "who was in the outrigger") were answered in the show, and who could explain the ending in the context of the entire series, who also hated the ending. There may be such people, but I've never talked to one. (And simply asserting, "I am one" doesn't work, as you would first have to demonstrate that you understand how the tapestry fits together by answering a couple dozen of those "unanswered questions" that were answered in the show, and THEN saying you hate the ending anyway.)

Fucking enter key...
I like to think I understand LOST. It's not like it's that complicated. I didn't love the last episode, nor did I hate it, it just wasn't what I wanted. It disappointed me, but I don't think it's the worst thing ever. And honestly, what disappointed me was the flash-sideways, not the actual conclusion where Smokey and Jack have their showdown and Jack saves the world. I thought that wrapped up rather nicely. I just didn't care for the way the flash-sideways wrapped.

If he had pushed the button, the Oceanic flight wouldn't have crashed, but also Desmond wouldn't be there to push the button, as the survivors ultimately are the reason for the Swan and Desmond having to push the button. It creates a paradox, which is one of the things I love about the show. The way everything wrapped up when Jack and the crew returned to the real timeline went as well as I could have hoped, but the sideways universe just fell flat for me on the very last episode with the big reveal. It's like they forgot about all the mysteries of the show and just explained one mystery, wtf the sideways universe is, and left it at that. We never really fully understood why there were all these temples on the island, why exactly the island functions as a cork, why the Man in Black is transformed by the light into a Smoke Monster and Jack isn't affected by it.

That tends to be my problem as well. And again, not as someone who thinks the show is 100% perfect, but who really likes it overall and still considers it among my favorite shows
The outrigger thing did really bug me admittedly, because it could have been so easily solved in 30seconds of screentime. It didn't matter who specifically was in it, as long as SOMEONE was in it to close the time loop.
But you're right, a lot of the time the criticism are as I mentioned the 'they were dead all along' route, or as many people have said in this thread 'the ending had nothing to do with the show'.
If by the ending they mean the church scene, it was the resolution of one particular mystery that went through all of season 6, and a way to wrap up all the characters, and put a new spin on the flashback motif. The show also was thematically about life and death from the beginning.
But what I don't get is, that is NOT the ending to the island story, which people seem to think it is, or should be.
The ending to the island story is Jack killing MiB, then sacrificing himself so Kate/Sawyer/Myles/Richard/Claire can escape. And Hurley stepping up to be leader, and Ben finally finding some humility.
Now people can assess that climax on its own merits if they like, but I don't see why the church stuff has to have any baring on that. It's like people only saw that last scene and just erase everything else

Yeah I always find it weird when people say they can't follow these shows like Lost or Game of thrones
I've been hearing that a lot about GoT lately, that people can't keep track of the plot.
I can understand someone just not liking something, even if it's highly acclaimed or popular (ie me with Breaking bad) but when people tell me they are having trouble following the plot of Lost or GoT or whatever, I just furrow my brow. It seems fairly straight forward to me even with all the jumping from story to story.

To the subject of the temples, are we supposed to believe that the simple peasant people living on the island that the Man in Black went to were the ones who constructed the temples? If so, why did these people look caucasian yet constructed Egyptian temples? I've watched LOST from the beginning on NETFLIX twice now and still don't understand the Egyptian link to the island. I always believed they were going to reveal the Island is what inspired the myth of Atlantis and Mu but never got around to it.

Well whether Jack became the new smoke monster is I suppose open to debate/interpretation.
The writers said they purposely left it ambigous if 'Mother' was both the Jacob and the smoke monster prior to Jacob and MiB.
I originally thought the Egyptian stuff needed more explaining, but on rewatch realized it works pretty well through what is implied. I see it basically that they were a lot like the dharma initiative, they came to the island and did wacky experiments, at the level of their era.
This was prior to Jacob meeting Richard, so he didn't get involved at all, so MiB probably manipulated them a lot. They likely built the fertility god statue because of the rampant fertility on the island, the temple, and the other ancient structures. They completed the donkey wheel MiB started, but somehow because of their own infighting, or MiB's manipulation they ended up wiping each other out.

How would they be able to explain that in the finale and still tie it up in a satisfying way while also tying up the on island original unverse stuff?
I think if they didn't go the route they did, it would have been better to just either have flashbacks all season, although of what I'm not really sure. Or just have all on island stuff, which would be cool in some ways, but would seem odd compared with the first 5 seasons.

I think the folks who say they cannot follow LOST are idiots with short attention spans. The thing about LOST is it built up a mythology that you needed to understand from episode to episode. Stupid people with short attention spans, the kind that the modern 24HOUR news cycle is designed for, don't have the capacity to understand complicated things. I find there are a lot of people who dislike LOST for two reasons, 1. THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND IT BECAUSE THEY'RE FUCKING STUPID, or 2. THEY UNDERSTAND IT AND JUST THINK IT'S FUCKING STUPID. I run into more of the first group, people who just never got into it because they had to pay attention. It's like The X-Files, although there were a lot of stand alone episodes, my favorite episodes were the ones that dealt with the mythology of the series (the Consortium, the Oil, et cetera). But unlike The X-Files, where the writers essentially just gave up and became lazy, LOST focused more on the mystery of the last season (like you said), what these flash-sideways segments are all about, and didn't focus on the actual mythology of the show that a lot of people were curious about. And sure, the flash-sideways does in some ways deal with the mythology, it doesn't really explain a lot of it. That's what disappointed me. I don't think they became lazy and gave up, I just think they tried to be clever by changing up the flashbacks and ended up opening a whole other can of worms that they didn't really have time to deal with because they had just one season left. But perhaps that's intentional, to create a fan following when the show isn't even on the air, so one day when they bring LOST back they can just mine all the ideas on the fan forums.

evilsmokemonster: The way everything wrapped up when Jack and the crew returned to the real timeline went as well as I could have hoped, but the sideways universe just fell flat for me on the very last episode with the big reveal.
Me: I think this is largely mitigated by keeping in mind the entire time that it is a story. There couldn't be a big reveal that explains how islands travel through time, how two timelines exist simultaneously, how smokie monsters do stuff...because those things don't exist. They were part of a myth.
evilsmokemonster: It's like they forgot about all the mysteries of the show and just explained one mystery, wtf the sideways universe is, and left it at that.
Me: This is the problem I referenced earlier. That is NOT what they did. Save for the outrigger thing, virtually everything was explained. You just had to put the pieces together yourself.
evilsmokemonster: We never really fully understood why there were all these temples on the island
Me: People built them. People had been coming to the island for some time. And it's not such a stretch to suggest similar "games" (as that between Jacob and his brother) had been played previously, where people had been brought there before.
evilsmokemonster:, why exactly the island functions as a cork,
me: Because of the exotic matter is the Source. There is no "why" in regard to the source. If there were, it wouldn't be the source. As Mother said, every question will just lead to another question. To ask for an answer that stops all questions whatsoever is beyond the ability of any story.
evilsmokemonster: why the Man in Black is transformed by the light into a Smoke Monster and Jack isn't affected by it.
me: MIB died before his body fell into the light. Jack did not. Moreover, Jack WAS affected by it. He was transported outside in the very same way MIB's body was, except Jack was alive and MIB's body was not. The exotic matter has effects on space-time, and one quirk of it was this transportation effect (that was also seen in Season 3 with Locke, Desmond, and Eko, so it cannot be claimed this had never been referenced before).

evilsmokemonster: To the subject of the temples, are we supposed to believe that the simple peasant people living on the island that the Man in Black went to were the ones who constructed the temples?
Me: No. Also, you have a couple things wrong here. Mother tells us that she came from her mother, and her mother had a mother, and so on. The story of the island didn't BEGIN with Mother. There is no mystery as to who built the temples. PEOPLE DID. And secondly, the people MIB went to were not "peasants". He even explains that there are quite educated scientists among them (they are the ones who dug the wells based on electromagnetism, after all).
evilsmokemonster: If so, why did these people look caucasian yet constructed Egyptian temples?
Me: Because they weren't the same people. Egyptians built the egyptian stuff. Other people built the wells and such.
evilsmokemonster: I've watched LOST from the beginning on NETFLIX twice now and still don't understand the Egyptian link to the island.
Me: Egyptians are the egyptian link to the island. Egyptians were on the island, so they built Egyptian stuff. It's not a big mystery.
evilsmokemonster: I always believed they were going to reveal the Island is what inspired the myth of Atlantis and Mu but never got around to it.
Me: No. Lost was its own myth. It was never going to completely borrow another one, and it would have been very cheap for it to do so.

Just what the hell was the island, how did it get there, and how was Locked able to walk? Haven't watched the show since it went off the air so I don't remember it as well as I once did, but I was a loyal watcher and I found the finale underwhelming...

soonerpike: Just what the hell was the island,
Me: It was an island.
soonerpike: how did it get there,
Me: The way islands form.
soonerpike: and how was Locked able to walk?
Me: Since the Source was on the island, it had an effect on every living thing. Those who had a greater destiny in service of protecting the Source were healed insofar as they needed to be to fulfill that service. If they went against that destiny--or strayed from the path--the island could withhold its healing power. Jacob as protector of the Source also had the ability to manipulate healing.
soonerpike: Haven't watched the show since it went off the air so I don't remember it as well as I once did, but I was a loyal watcher and I found the finale underwhelming...
me: I'd be happy to answer any questions.

And the reason the flash sideways have bearing on the on island ending is THEMES. Ultimately, what was the most important thing in the LOST universe? OTHER PEOPLE. That is what the flash sideways is all about. That is why Jack sacrificed himself. That is how Hurley said he would run the island.
Let me put it another way...
The ON ISLAND ending would have been fine on its own. It would have been left up to debate who was good, Jacob or the MiB, and if Jack was a sacrificial hero or tragic victim.
INSTEAD
The FLASH SIDEWAYS provided the reasoning for how to understand the on island ending. They said this is good and this is how it is rewarded.

jayemel: They said this is good and this is how it is rewarded.
Me: I don't see it as a reward, except in the dullest sense of the term (you didn't fail and cause all human goodness to extinguish). It's a frame through which to see the entire journey of our Losties is in fact the destination of all of our Losties, and that that journey isn't a "reward" that is separate from itself...but that, quite simply, the journey is the point, the journey is the destination, and that anything less would make the journey pointless.

yeah what jacob said, it's an island. I've never really understood what people are looking for in terms of an answer to that. I don't see 'what is the island?' as a mystery
as for the egyptians, I believe it goes as such:
-Mother, and perhaps other people with her arrive on the island, and Mother becomes the protector, presumably by having passed to her from someone else
-Claudia arrives with the other Romans, gives birth to Jacob & MiB, etc. Mother dies Jacob becomes the protector, MiB becomes smokey
-Jacob 'brings' the Egyptians to the island, they built a lot of stuff, Jacob doesn't get involved, MiB does, eventually they all die
-whether or not anyone else came and died off in the meantime is unknown, and not important
-the black rock arrives, Jacob meets richard, they agree to form the Others
-more people come to the island, eventually though no details provided at some point some British people come, including Widmore and Eloise (whether they were born there or arrived as children is not specified)
and so forth and so on

Its a nice way to bring back all the characters who had died previously for a bit of nostalgia.
It's a shame they couldn't/didn't get quite everybody, but aside from Tom, Eko and Walt they did a pretty good job of rounding up all the favorite faces. Is it a bit cheesy and sentimental? Sure, but so what, I don't consider that a bad thing in and of itself. The show was always self referencial and had repeating motifs and whatnot.

but had it otherwise exactly the same, everyone sits down, Christian in a Pilots uniform moves up to the front cockpit for them to 'depart', but otherwise same sentiment, same music, etc I think it might have been received a bit better and would have been a little bit more in the normal visual language of the show
although that church was the same church from season 5 with the lamp post station which pointed the way to the island, so even it was a call back to an earlier idea.

If tomorrow ABC announced they were bring LOST back in some form, either with a season 7 that dealt with Hurley and Ben and Walt running the island with some new Losties showing up, but with new writers onboard, and it would be shot in Hawaii still and otherwise maintain the same production values, would you tune in?
The reason I ask is, I'm sort of surprised ABC hasn't actually done that already, they don't have a lot of tentpole shows at the moment, and they own the rights to LOST whether Lindeloff/Cuse are involved or not, so just from a Network lack of original ideas/easy cash grab angle, I'm just surprised they haven't already done this
Especially given that they have green lit so many shows like Flashforward that have tried to be 'the new Lost' and have been unable to get any of them past season 1.

rebelscum: If tomorrow ABC announced they were bring LOST back in some form, either with a season 7 that dealt with Hurley and Ben and Walt running the island with some new Losties showing up, but with new writers onboard, and it would be shot in Hawaii still and otherwise maintain the same production values, would you tune in?
Me: Ignoring for a moment that this would never happen, no. It's the worst idea ever. Lost is a self contained story.
rebelscum: The reason I ask is, I'm sort of surprised ABC hasn't actually done that already, they don't have a lot of tentpole shows at the moment, and they own the rights to LOST whether Lindeloff/Cuse are involved or not, so just from a Network lack of original ideas/easy cash grab angle, I'm just surprised they haven't already done this
Me: The problem is that the story is over, and the creative people who made it so popular are done with it. Talent isn't a dime a dozen. If it were, then that dozen of Lost knock-offs that have shown up during and after Lost's run would have gotten off the ground. But none of them did because they didn't really understand the appeal of the show.
rebelscum: Especially given that they have green lit so many shows like Flashforward that have tried to be 'the new Lost' and have been unable to get any of them past season 1.
Me: Right. But simply putting the "Lost" name on a spin off doesn't make it different than "The Event", "Flashforward", "Persons Unknown", etc, etc, etc. All of those shows had other writers, other actors, other directors, etc, and they crashed and burned worse than Flight 815. But worse than that, "Lost" was in a very unique situation during its inception. It was put together so late in the pilot season that the execs couldn't really give any notes (ie, screw up the show), and JJ's name allowed everyone to do what they do best. And once Lost took flight on the air, the execs were both afraid to give notes and probably incapable of giving notes (they didn't get it, which is why they fired Lloyd Braun after green lighting it but BEFORE the pilot ever aired). All of these other Lost-wannabes were created specifically to ride Lost's coat tails, so the execs had to be involved at every turn...which is why they all sucked. Trying to copy something good is not the same as something good.

Cant be as bad as Heroes or Awake. (And I did give those shows a chance)
As long as Emerson, Garcia and Malcolm David Kelley are in, I'd watch it.
Maybe they could get some cameos, explain some of the other mysteries they didn't have time to solve, etc.
Fuck it. Do it. We all know we'd watch, but come to think of it....
What would they call it?

Were most of the characters storylines all dropped in the final season. With many having nothing to do for most of the season.
They dropped almost everything, island storylines and character storylines.
People say, "it was about the characters." However the final season it was based almost entirely on the relationship built up over the past years. Storywise, emotionally, everything. They were treated as badly as the mysteries in the final season.
The purgatory thing being all emotional does not substitute the bad way the writers treated the characters and their stories in the final season.

We met at a weekly gathering thru a site called meetup.com com
Meetup.com had a NYC LOST meetup and we had over 100 people a week that would get together, drink, watch and discuss LOST after each live episode.
I did however go to San Diego Comic Con in '08 (with Paburrows) and go to the final panel as far as cons go. We skipped the shit outta that line, lol.
But yeah, I wouldn't be where I am today without LOST.

If the journey was the point, there would be no need to have half of the last season dedicated to a plot mechanic intended to symbolize what happens at the end of the journey--how you look back on your life and what gives you happiness as you move on (other people).

Characters such as Widmore and Benjamin Linus, as well as the "Others" who worked on the mainland, were reduced to utter blandness by the change in story (more like the struggle to confabulate a story end where there had never been a plan in place to begin with). Hawking's character was also reduced to nothing after having been touted as some sort of omniprescient time lord who had all of the answers. Said turning into a zombie-type character, then sort of morphing into just a dazed and morose sad guy. What...THEE...FUCK?
* The Cabin Nonsense, including floating around, Horace building it, and the Man in Black being confined in it by a ring of ash while also simultaneously NOT being confined in it because the fucking smoke monster had been flying about all over the place at the same time that the Man in Black was also supposed to be locked in the cabin.
Sorry, but this shit could go on and on and on. Lindelof and Cuse were making up a bunch of bullshit but lacked the ability to bring it all together. They were so unorganized in their plotting, they couldn't even fit in the outrigger sequence where we see the party (which was Widmore's party, but that's not the point) who was firing on Sawyer's group. They started a story for Illana and then had to BLOW HER UP AT RANDOM to get rid of her because they "Ran out of time" to tell her story. Ran out of time? That wouldn't have happened if they'd had a story. They just wanted to always keep the audience guessing, and if they ever DID have a satisfying wrap-up to the story, they sacrificed it just to give us something we'd never suspect. And you know WHY we'd never expect it? Because who would want to expect a stupid, inane, and completely incongruous ending that satisfied only the thickest of the thick.

Heck yea I would also watch it, Lindeloff even mentioned that he had the feeling that ABC would do it in some form or another. Flight 815's story is pretty much done, Darlton did a pretty great job of closing up any possibilty of future creators making more stories about Jack, etc by killing him off and doing the Flash Sideways/Purgatory route (Not the main reason they went that route, others have explained that here today very well), Just like JK Rowling did an Epolouge 10 years later so that future creators cound't touch her characters as they were without major effort.
But I could see a Lost the next crash group show with Hurley, Ben and Walt or something. Lindeloff even mentions a few times in an interview about the possibility of ABC hiring writers to do character books. Kind of like the one that was written around season 2 (I think that it was Lost Son or something?) except actually good. I know that the Fringe creators were saying that if they had been canceled they would have finished the shows story via other mediums, which I would guess would have been Comicbook since they have already done a number of those.
Speaking of Fringe my prediction is that its going to end awesomely, but theres still going to be just as many people (probably the same people as with Lost) that complain about its ending.

You'll never watch anything any of them ever do writing wise. That is something a child would do or a person who is on the last steps in their lives where they live just a bitter existence.
I understand disliking Lost, fine whatever, but don't hate on Prometheus or whichever project because you can get over the ending of a show.

Depends. I still think that the concept of LOST, the basic outline of the mythology etc is fascinating and something that tapped into that would be something I'd watch.
However, knowing now that it was all just shit thrown against a wall to see what stuck means I'm not sure I could be arsed getting invested all over again. Maybe if there different showrunners.
And @jacob, I watched every episode, understood it all (I think) and absolutely hated the ending and most of the final season. I know they weren't dead all along and I understand (as much as anyone can) what Desmond's purpose was. My problem is that it sucks.
@theveryfirst, I agree with all of what you wrote except for the insult at the end. On LOST, every new character is set up exactly the same, be it the others, or Ben, or Widmore, or Eloise or Jacob. Each time we are lead to believe that these are the keepers of the secrets, that the power of the Island is actually KNOWN by these people.
And each time we eventually discover they know nothing. And why? Because the writers were pulling it out their asses.
If Jacob was only ever spoken to by Ben then why were the others so willing to lay down their lives for him? If Richard is so wise and all knowing then how come he's in the dark about the smoke monster? If the cabin contains smokie then how come he's out killing people for the first few seasons? Are we really supposed to believe that Ben was "pretending" every time he went to the cabin? If the temple others are so important why does Jacob have so little contact with them and why does Ben mark the temple on a map with a Dharma logo? If Widmore got banished for having a kid off the island who was it who banished him and while we're at it, what was that mysterious other way Tom, Jacob etc used to travel to and from the Island? What was the deal with the donkey wheel, "you're not supposed to raise him Jack" and Aaron getting on the helicopter? And why at one time was it implied that Ben and Widmore couldn't kill each other?
The answers to all the above don't exist because they were never worked out by the writers. They never figured out how the next group of characters fitted in with the previous ones so each time they just killed them off before having to explain anything.
THAT is what makes LOST so fustrating. Its that the internal rules of the show changed from season to season and whole plot lines were dropped after previously seeming significant. That's why the ending was so bad because it finally brought home just how much of the series was just random shit with no pay-off and no amount of slo-mo hugging in purgatory can change that.
There is something to be said for how much it inspires debate 2 years on but mainly that's because the premise was so awesome and the execution do fucking terrible.

Yeah I think it could work just as well as TNG & DS9 did or other shows with franchised spinoffs like stargate, provided the spinoff was distinct enough and didn't rely on just continuing like you said with Jack and the rest.
The only characters that would really make sense to bring back are Hurley, Ben and Walt, and even Hurley and Ben need not be in every episode, since they are now the Jacob & Richard of the island, though I would presume they would not be so omnious & mysterious since Hurley didn't want to run the island that way.
I actually think FRINGE could have been a perfect LOST spinoff without having to change anything about it except for Walter Bishop & William Bell's names
If Walter was named Gerald Degroot, and Bell was named Alvar Hanso, and massive dynamic was called The Hanso Foundation. Pretty much NOTHING else about fringe would need to be altered and it would work perfectly within the Lost universe.
Actually I guess the only other minor thing would be since Lance Riddick was in both shows. But you could even fix that by having all the observors played by Riddick, implying Matthew Abbandon was an observor, then just get someone else to play the sgt.

I've always felt that the problem with the last episode(s) was that it didn't fit in thematically with everything that had gone before. If they'd introduced the possibility that the big reveal would be some heart-of-the-island, light-in-a-cave bullshit earlier on, I think they would have steered away from it in the face of viewer reaction.
I had no real problem with the sideways stuff, but felt that it detracted from the real story.
The series was a puzzle that took in all these incredible elements (time travel, numerology, predestination etc.), yet pussed out with an ending that addressed very little of what came before.

It was more than a tv show, it was an experience, the discussion, the analysis, the theorising between each episode on the talkbacks here was all part of it.
I loved the finale season of Lost, I mostly loved the final episode, the on island scenes were absolutely perfect. The sideways world for me could have finished a bit more ambigiously rather than confirming it was purgatory. Maybe I say that as I am showing my bias as an atheist and I liked the idea that we were seeing a parallel universe or an alternative timeline

The sad part about Lost, is how it exposed the con job that a lot of these co ax series really are. Write a brilliant first season, hook everyone, then just milk it. Doesnt matter if it makes sense or not if it sells for an extra season or two. You dont even have to have an idea of how it all ends. Im not normally a hater, but for someone who followed Lost pretty closely for every season, it really ended up being a piece of garbage.

I'm not trying to be snide, but just honestly want to know, because I personally found the resolution to Breaking Bad season2 about the laziest, most contrived and pretentious thing I'd seen in quite sometime.
After all the teasing of the destruction at walt's house all season, it ends up being as a result of the most ridiculous turn of events that had nothing to do with what had been set up to that point.
Coincidences and whatnot are fine if they're ingrained in the language and style of the show, something like BSG or LOST where fate and destiny and interconnected pasts are part of the show all along
But the contivance that Cranston goes to the bar and then meets Q from TNG who gives him a speech which then convinces Cranston to go back and kill the girl, who is infact unbeknownst the daughter of the stranger he just had a drink with, which would then in turn cause a mid air collision I felt was a big middle finger the viewer. Especially because there was nothing in the show up to that point that dealt with coincidences or intertwined fates etc.
The reason I ask, and again I mean this at face value, is I'm not sure I get why people hate Lost so much for supposedly do this, but consider Breaking Bad the second coming for doing exactly the same thing.

In fact, the titles of the episodes in season 2 where they show the aftermath of the crash are "731" "Down" "Over" "Abq" which was put in there deliberately to tell viewers that this was the plan all along. Personally, I found it a bit too coincidental too, even though I guess that's what they were going for.
My problem isn't with making it up as you go, BSG's writers were quite open about that being the case on their show, it's TV and improvisation is always going to be an aspect. But despite what Lindeloff says now, I read loads of interviews with him saying all we be explained, in particular I remember Cuse saying "nothing gets onto the show without us deciding how to pay it off". With a mystery show, I think you owe it to your audience to at least try to make it make sense.
Carnivale and Babylon 5 showed that a certain amount of planning can lead to satisfying payoffs for the audience. LOST didn't do that even after they secured an endgame from the network.

I agree with that, and I do think part of the problem was that Cuse & Lindeloff kept reiterating that it was planned in a lot of interviews which created that expectation
I do have a bit of a different take on it then most, I don't so much think it was all made up with no plan, I believe Lindeloff said in some podcast or interview that the main bit of planning took place between seasons 1 and 2, where a lot of things were ironed out in broad strokes.
I do think this is at least partially true, however, my overall impression is that between seasons 4 and 5 the writers changed their plans signifigantly, and I'm not really sure why they did
It tells the most apparently in the oceanic 6 storyline, because so much is set up over the course of seasons 3 & 4, about widmore, Jeremy Bentham, Jacob etc, but when it comes back for season 5 almost all the character motivations seem to have changed.
-Locke never ends up telling Jack or Kate or Sayid or Sun any of the information that he supposedly told them before his death
-Ben has apparently never met Jacob (which makes no sense)
-Widmore's exile from the island not being by way of the donkey wheel
-Rousseau having seen that it was Ben who stole Alex
-jack wanting to go back to the island to make it that they never went to the island
-Hurley completely switching gears from 'we never should have left' to 'we should not go back'
-Sayid hating Ben instead of working for him because... Ben ran out of people for him to kill?
-Men with dart guns sent by... ?
-Jeremy Bentham working for Widmore, instead of adopting that alias to hide from him?
-Sun blames Ben for killing Jin, but there is no possible way she could know Ben killed Keamy and set off the bomb unless she had met with Bentham, which she didn't
-'Evil' Sun thread basically being dropped
-Widmore's 'organization' of conspirators who are... ?
-Ms Hawking is just the former leader of the Others, could not possibly have all the time altering info she did when speaking to Desmond in season 3
-Jacob lives in the statue no the cabin
-Richard having more power in the Others than Widmore or Ben
-etc
I think if they had continued with what they set up in seasons 3 and 4 it could have gone really well, and I'm not sure why they switched gears on so many things, whether it was all planned or none of it was.
But I do think the Locke dying then seeming to resurrect then actually being the smoke monster is the one thread on the series that had to have been planned for quite some time, there is a lot of things that set this up and work towards it throughout all the seasons. Or it could be an improv that just worked really well.

Widmore's exile WAS from the donkey wheel, that is how he knew to place the cameras where they were in the desert when Ben was exiled.
Locke did talk to everyone, they just never showed what he said to them, those characters that met with him only hinted to what he said.
Ms. Hawking knew what she knew because she read through her sons journal after she killed him, which is how she knew what was supposed to transpire to bring certain individuals to the island, further emphasizing the point she was a cold hearted bitch.
The cabin was Smokey trying to manipulate Ben and the Others, but as it is never really defined WHERE the cabin is, I don't feel like this is as big an issue as some on here have brought up. Sure it had a ring of ash around it, but whose to say the ring of ash that encompassed the cabin didn't also encompass a much larger portion of the island. I always thought the ring of ash kept the smoke monster confined to certain areas of the island, like the pilons around Dharmaville kept the smoke monster out.
As for Richard, Richard was the true representative of the Island and Jacob. This is why most of the Others followed Richards lead, whether it be when he followed Widmore OR Ben.

From the verge interview.
He says he didn't like the 6th season episode "Across the Sea." The one that has Jacob and his brother as kids.
It seems he didn't like it for the same reasons I didn't. Wasn't about the characters we'd been watching ect.
The problem is, why on earth did he then make the final season all about these plots and these guys? Not the characters.
That's why the final season is a let down. It abandoned so much of the show.
On the mysteries, they'd have been better off leaving the "power" more undefined than a yellow light. Worked more on wrapping up plots of what had gone on, on the island, off and to do with it. Leave the power more undefined.
Remember how cool Dharma was in season 2?
Then in Season 3, with the others, the whole. What's the deal?
Remember the set up to Ben being some wanted evil genius. Eh forgotten. The whole outside the island stuff was set up like there was some organisation working. Some big thing, then nopes, eh whatever.
It teased so many possibilities. They stimulated out imagination. Ultimately it all went to far less interesting places.
Like Widmore. Teased to be so awesome. The ending of him was eh..
I think one of the problems is, they didn't work on addressing things in a timely fashion. Some stuff that was really insane was thrown out there. When they had no idea how to address it. Lockes father for instance. WTF? The magic box on the island.
A huge appeal was the mystery. However they could have started working in answers into the show. Instead of building, building and building them. Just to ditch the plots. I don't mean exact answers. Even mysterious answers would have been good.
Answer them with mysteries that point us in a direction. Being lead to believe their was a plan, that they had planned the final seasons. All along we were forgiving. Sucked in. Accepting the often lack of answers and crazy stuff. "Don't worry they have a plan."
That's why when the final season goes off the rails, really quickly in. The crushing disappointment and frustration sets in.
If the show had been made exactly the same but ended at the end of season 5. It'd have been a better ending.

Great list of abandoned plot points. Those are the main problems with the show because each was supposedly having major effects on the characters and yet they just get dropped and the characters suffer as a result. Remember "the rules"? What was all THAT about?
I seriously think most of the plot points in LOST were put in on the fly just to create the most bizarre WTF moments.
"guys I know its a tropical island but lets have a polar bear"
" and then he gets down there and it's really cold and there's this huge wheel in there"
"and Richard visits Locke as a boy and he's drawn the smoke monster"
"Sayid is killing people because of...BEN!"
"what if Claire is in the cabin too and she's looking all enigmatic and stuff"
Etc etc. I have to admit all of those AT THE TIME were great moments but when there's no payoff it's diminished somewhat. Like the series as a whole.

I agree that that was the setup for Widmore's exile
But then a few episodes later we see in 'dead is dead' that Widmore's exile was Ben having some guards escort him to the submarine, which was by comparison quite lame, and begs the question how Ben knew about the wheel, how widmore knew about the exit point, or what he meant when he said 'Linus tricked you, as he did me' to Locke.
Where as if Widmore had ordered the purge, and then after Jacob had told Ben to tell Widmore to turn the wheel and move the island so the DI couldn't find it again, and Widmore didn't know the consequence would be permanent exile, then it would all add up, and make Ben's exile at the end of season 4 even more poignant. But as things were left, that is not what was shown on screen.

We saw all of Jacks conversation with Locke, and he never indicated
-terrible things were happening on the island
-that it was all of Jack's fault
-That Ben had also left the island
All of which are things Jack tells Ben in season 4 that Locke told him
The O6 using Locke's alias doesn't even make sense given the context by which it was adopted.
re: Ms Hawking
How could daniel's journal have info about Desmond going to a jewelry shop on that specific day, then witnessing a man in red shoes being crushed by bricks?
The only way Farady could have these details (which would have to be date and time specific) is if Desmond told him. But when would desmond have even have communicated this to him?

The issue of why the cabin stuff gets muddled is there is a few too many layers of complication, here are the facts as outlined by the show:
-Jacob lived in the statue prior to Richard's arrival
-Sometime in the 1960s or 1970s Horace built the cabin
-at some point after that Jacob started living in the cabin. There was a circle of ash around it presumably to keep smokey out
-at some point Ben was told Jacob occupied the cabin
-At some point the circle of ash was broken and Jacob left, and smokey started impersonating Jacob there
-Ben knew about the cabin, but has NEVER met Jacob. All his communication was Jacob was through Richard, Richard knows Jacob is at the statue and not the cabin, but for some reason Ben does not know that Jacob is not at the cabin
-Ilana who worked directly for Jacob, was under the impression she could find Jacob at the cabin
The problem isn't so much that Ben never met Jacob, as it is that Ben KNOWS he has never met Jacob. If Richard was not the go between, and Ben had been meeting with smokey in the cabin all these years under the impression he was talking to the real Jacob then everything works fine.
And none of this factors in why the cabin moves, whats with all the creepy jars, the dog painting, etc.
I also just think the terrifying cabin was a much more interesting location then the statue. Why not have all that stuff of Ben killing Jacob take place in the cabin? That would have worked just as well and made everything work a lot better.

I agree that is the case, I just think it made more sense if the leader, be it Ben or Widmore or any previous leaders were made leader based on the fact that Jacob would appear to them and not others. Richard was more interesting as advisor, the one who finds the leaders but doesn't get to lead himself, instead of in season 5 where we find out he is the advisor but when he disagrees with the Leader he just does whatever the hell he wants.
Why not just be the offical leader then, instead of the murderous ego maniacs they keep electing?

Where did Damon say he didn't like 'across the sea'?
He wrote that episode, and in the commentary seems quite pleased with it, even addressing a lot of the criticism it got.
I'm actually in the minority who quite likes that episode.

Because even with any plot inconsistencies, ultimately it was a very enjoyable and entertaining ride to be on, and I don't feel that anything I disliked (which is very little compared to how much I did) takes a way from the fact of how much entertainment value I got over the 6 year run.
It's not that I think it's flawless, just that the flaws never diminish my enjoyment
which could be equally said of Lord of the rings, or star trek, or star wars or tons of other shows, books movies etc.

LOST wasn't bad enough, he also worked on Cowboys and Aliens?? If it wasn't for this guy I'd be first in line to watch Prometheus. As it is, I'll probably check it out on video just cause it's Ridley Scott. This current generation of story tellers needs to learn something about setup and payoff. They're great at setup, terrible at payoff.
I personally wont watch anything associated with him or JJ Abrams.

What was the purpose? I'm a smart guy, but that show confused the hell out of me. I was willing to hang on for the ride, but I honestly didn't understand the last few seasons. Perhaps my mind can't wrap around that kind of fantasy. I stuck with "Flashforward", until the idiotic decision to have a months-long break - I stopped. Lost track. (Also, seeing that room of fully intact schoolroom-science skeletons didn't help - come on, bones don't stay together like that - it was really ludicrous to me, and pissed me off. Sure, it's cheaper to prop it out in such a fashion, but....)
I lasted through ONE episode of "The Event."
I DO want to watch that new show about all the power shutting off......what's the name?

The idiot ABC people tacked that on at the credits because they thought that it would be cool and tye things back to the first season and all it did was confuse people and Darlton even came out a number of times to express their dismay over that chioce.

No worries. The shots of the wreckage on the beach at the end was an network idea as they thought people would need a breath/moment of silence to let the emotional punch at the end sit for a moment.
I remember at the time Lindeloff tweeted, or mentioned in an interview that he wished it wasn't there as it lead to confusion. But its not meant to be taken as 'this is the wreckage in the pilot look nobody is alive' it's just some production footage, sort of just a tableau of 'here is an inconic location and set pieces, with only the sound of the waves in the background to let you digest what you you've just seen'
Sort of like when movies end with their credits over a bunch of photosor something like that. it's not a reveal or anything like that, just a moderately artsy image to go out on.
Like if the end credits were just over a wide shot of the island itself, or something like that.

I did. I loved it. I studied it. I was at Lostpedia way too much. You could say it was my own fault that I was so let down, that I had been such a geek fan. That I had such faith. The show was so well written, so much fun, I almost felt they were promising me, in that kind of quality, that they knew what they were doing. Remember the online LOST game, the LOST Experience? It explains Dharma and the Numbers so imaginatively, so hauntingly, so mysticism meeting sci-fi, I just assumed that they had surprising and uncommon answers for EVERYTHING. But about the time when they told us the Whispers were just the Island's Dead, I knew they were just gong to throw any old explanation on anything, the easiest explanation they could slap on, cause they DIDN'T know what they were doing, that they seeded this show with mysteries and clues that went nowhere, that they were too lazy and frustrated with what they had built to really care, they thought we who loved the show would follow them anywhere and not complain.

Some previous leader of the Others or Jacob could have been moving the island with the donkey wheel and where the island appeared happened to be a spot in the sea where the blackrock was sailing, so the island just appeared underneath it.

For the most part the answers can be figured out with a bit of rewatching a study. I still have faith that Darlton did have a basic plan and did have answers for everything. Sure they didn't spell out each and everything, but the answers are out there and can be found with enough searching.

I'd love to see how that could possibly be explained. Especially as Dharma seemingly were clueless as to the power of the island.
A great example of the strengths and weaknesses of LOST is the episode 'The Economist' from season 4. It's full of questions, intrigue and has a total WTF ending. Unfortunately, none of it makes a lick of sense. We never find out *why* any of it is happening or what it means. But it's entertaining while it's on.
LOST in a nutshell.

I felt like everything that made no sense about the Swan hatch was adequately answered when they showed Radzinsky in Season 5 and what a paranoid insane douche he turned out to be.
I agree a lot of the details about the swan defy explanation, but when you see who's invention it was... I dunno I just felt that a guy that ridiculous could come up with a lot of that stuff.

My guess is that Dharma borrowed from a lot of influences, back when Dharma was big a lot of organizations would borrow from all sort of spiritual and other philosophies. I believe that the countdown clock translated to underworld or something which tyes into a bunch of different world ideas.

what the FUCK do u get out of bitching about a show that u HATE??? is 2 years not enough time to *get over it*?? ITS JUST A FUCKING TV SHOW! NONE of ur bitchy bitchiness has changed a fucking thing lol! it was LAME the first time u posted it 2 years ago, and its STILL lame now. i have an awesome idea....get off ur asses and go DO SOMETHING U ENJOY, like, i dunno, watching a tv show u LIKE and go talk about that instead of griping about something thats 2 FUCKING YEARS OLD. for Christs sake, brotha....

You: If it's not patently obvious to you that the entire writing team had absolutely no idea where their alleged "story" was going, then you are the Mark of all Marks.
Me: Not really, as I knew from day one that there are no smoke monsters, no magic islands, no grand coincidences overflowing with a secret meaning. There could never be a hard answer to these questions, only a mythological one. And since the show was always working heavily with myth, that is the only kind of ending it could ever have.
You: Characters such as Widmore and Benjamin Linus, as well as the "Others" who worked on the mainland, were reduced to utter blandness by the change in story
Me: Widmore a bit. Not the others--er, the Others, including Ben. The sideways 'verse also gave us a glimpse of who these people could have been. It was a look back, not in regret of their lives, but in making meaning of it in retrospect from the literary trope of a soul--which works perfectly well since the characters are not real anyway. They are shared constructs we all created together to find each other before moving on, which makes the ending perfect and symmetrical to our experience of the story itself.
You: (more like the struggle to confabulate a story end where there had never been a plan in place to begin with).
Me: The entire story is confabulated. It isn't real, you know.
You: Hawking's character was also reduced to nothing after having been touted as some sort of omniprescient time lord who had all of the answers.
Me: Another instance where you missed the point. In the island timeline, Hawking only seemed omniscient because she had lived through past events and knew what was coming...to a point. In the sideways universe, she was dead just like everyone else--coming to grips with what it all meant, and letting go, as her comment to Desmond regarding her son exemplifies.
You: Said turning into a zombie-type character, then sort of morphing into just a dazed and morose sad guy. What...THEE...FUCK?
Me: Said? Oh, you mean SAYID. Sayid had turned to the dark side by virtue of evil, malevolence, what-have-you, that was personified by MIB. Sayid had indeed done evil things in his life. But Desmond touched the OTHER side, the good side, which allowed him to show it to everyone else in the sideways 'verse. It also gave him an insight into the goodness of everyone, including Sayid, and with a few perfectly placed questions regarding what Sayid would tell Nadia about what he had done to get back to her...turned Sayid back to the light. Which, as it turns out, was crucial to saving all of humanity--Desmond had a key role to play, and he wouldn't have been able to play that role if he had still been in that well or if Sayid had killed him as ordered (or if the Losties had never caused the incident which caused Desmond to cause the crash which caused the Losties to cause the incident).
You: * The Cabin Nonsense, including floating around
Me: It floated around due to the fact that the exotic matter had effects on space-time. This wasn't the only place this effect was seen on the island, as after Desmond turned the failsafe key in the Swan station, Desmond, Locke, and Eko all ended up above ground in various places. Moreover, MIB's body ended up above ground as well, as did Jack after turning the Source back on. (The cabin floating around the island was a minor effect; turning the wheel to move the island was a major effect. Both were consequences of the exotic matter.)
You:, Horace building it
Me: Actually that was quite elegant.
You:, and the Man in Black being confined in it by a ring of ash while also simultaneously NOT being confined in it because the fucking smoke monster had been flying about all over the place at the same time that the Man in Black was also supposed to be locked in the cabin.
Me: He was never really locked in the cabin, though. It was a lie, a trick. Jacob had been using it at one point to communicate with his people, and MIB used it to trick others into thinking he was Jacob.
You: Sorry, but this shit could go on and on and on.
Me: But it isn't the show's fault if people didn't pay attention.
You: Lindelof and Cuse were making up a bunch of bullshit but lacked the ability to bring it all together.
Me: No, they brought it together quite elegantly. If you have any other questions, I can answer them.
You: They were so unorganized in their plotting, they couldn't even fit in the outrigger sequence where we see the party (which was Widmore's party, but that's not the point) who was firing on Sawyer's group.
Me: It doesn't matter. It's not a big deal.
You: They started a story for Illana and then had to BLOW HER UP AT RANDOM to get rid of her because they "Ran out of time" to tell her story. Ran out of time? That wouldn't have happened if they'd had a story.
Me: Actually the fact that little things like that were not explored makes the show better. Just like in the real world, there are things you never really learn about people. On the edges. The Ilana thing isn't much of a dangling thread, though. Her life was saved by Jacob, and after her services were through, fate snapped back much in the same way Hawking said the universe has a way of course correcting. Moreover, her story didn't really dangle after she blew up, as she was immediately featured in the sideways 'verse in the very next episode.
You: They just wanted to always keep the audience guessing, and if they ever DID have a satisfying wrap-up to the story, they sacrificed it just to give us something we'd never suspect.
Me: They did give us a satisfying ending to the story.
You: And you know WHY we'd never expect it? Because who would want to expect a stupid, inane, and completely incongruous ending that satisfied only the thickest of the thick.
Me: The ending was congruous with the entire show, as well as symmetrical thematically, cinematically, and character-wise. The show simply demanded more of its audience, and if some of the audience couldn't live up to those expectations...(shrug). "Lost" will be around long after both of us our dust.
P.S. I've never heard any of the naysayers suggest a plausible hard, quantitative, scientific "answer" to end the show that wouldn't gut the entire mythology. The only think you hear is people like that guy on the Verge who said "it was all a dream" would have been a satisfactory ending, and a talkbacker who suggested days after the finale that the island should have been a spaceship that Hurley flew into space...and that that would have been a better final image. Say what you will, but the end of the show was a stroke of genius for those who can see what's important and what is not.

I accepted after Season 3, that there was no way the writers had any idea wtf they were doing or how they were going to end the show. Up until that point I was of the belief that the whole thing was arced out and the end was already written and was looking for clues in Season 1 and yada, yada, yada.
After 3 full years, at least for me--it became apparent that a lot of these loose threads were never going to come together in a completely satisfying way. The whole Walt psychic thing was completely dropped and the smoke monster thing didn't sync or gel with what had come before, (a security system? Really? That's fucking stupid--ok, how about if it's a man who turns into a security system? No--still doesn't work...Fuck it--we'll inject even more gobbledygook to try to jury-rig it--and oh balls--what the hell--we give up) No one ever fucking knew what that thing was in the beginning--I don't believe anyone who says otherwise.
Anyone who wasn't in denial, could just tell that the shit was being written in little blocks--not one big block.
After I accepted that, I really enjoyed the show a lot more. The last season was a complete pleasure for me--and I never guessed the sideways/afterlife angle. They actually fooled me, and that hardly ever happens.
Anyhow, taken as a whole--it was a pretty impressive show. Just wish the writers had been fucking honest with us. That was my only bitch. They should have just come out and said--yeah, you fuckers guessed it after the pilot episode. The island was originally purgatory just like you guessed it was and we had to scramble in order to avoid the biggest anti-climax in TV history. They still won't admit to that, and I still think they are ego maniacs for the most part.
Even the haters have to admit, that the Season 3 finale was at that time (until Breaking Bad came along) the coolest thing that had ever graced their TV screens. Mind=Blown=Fucked.